Magnolia Beach

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How a Solar Two Stage Charge Controller Works

Greg at AM Solar just emailed me back with a reply to my question about my solar monitor flashing that the battery is full when it’s not.

The short answer is that the panel is poorly labeled. Solid light means that the charger is bringing me up to 80% capacity. Blinking light means that it is gently charging the other 20%. More below. But I wanted to comment on this part first because guess what my battery monitor was saying when the solar monitor started blinking? 80-ish%. It’s properly calibrated! Who cares that it’s registering 0.00V; it’s doing it’s job of tracking my amp hours! Woohoo!

This is Greg’s explanation:

“The 22B is a two stage charge controller when set for “Dry Camp” mode. This means the controller will deliver all available charging amperage until the batteries reach the set point. This is called “Bulk” charging and generally means the batteries are about 80% full. It then goes into “Absorbtion” (or Taper Charge) mode which means it holds the batteries at the set point while tapering off the charging amperage. This will finish charging the last 20%. As a general rule of thumb, when the charging amperage tapers off to about 1% or 2% of the battery capacity the battery is considered full.

When the 22B “Charging” light is on solid, the controller is in “Bulk” mode. When it starts flashing, it is in “Absorbtion” (or Taper Charge) mode and will continue delivering charging amperage at a reduced level so that it won’t unnecessarily drive water out of your batteries. So, for your situation, the 22B is still charging the batteries even when the light is flashing.”

He also confirmed that adding a solar panel is just a matter of mounting it then plugging it into the combiner box. Easy! Now, if I only had the $400 to order another 150W panel while they have them in stocked and boxed up. But I’d really like to be able to eat in March and I do need to think about moving on to San Antonio at some point, so I need to hang on a bit.

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Sun! Blue Sky! Amps Coming In!

The day started off really crappy, but the weather couldn’t be any better now! I’ve gained 16AH today and am still getting a good charge, so I will be ahead tonight.

I emailed AM Solar to ask them why my solar control monitor claims that I have a full charge when I know for sure that I do not. I was worried that the batteries would stop charging, but the battery monitor still sees the full amperage going back in, so I probably have a reporting glitch the same way I do with the volts on the battery monitor.

L and I went into town this afternoon to get shrimp for a traditional shrimp boil tonight. Mmmmm… sun, shrimp, beer, and ocean. This is the life!

We also detoured to the H.E.B. grocery store so I could check out their cat food selection since the Walmart didn’t carry Whiskas (!). Thankfully, I found my brood’s favoured food, and in the giant economical size to boot. What I bought them on Monday to tide us over hasn’t sat well with them at all and they were very happy when I opened that bad when I got home!

Finally, L took me to the post office so I could get my general delivery mail. Gina, your package hadn’t arrived yet. 🙁

It sure is nice to have someone else do the driving (and expend the fuel!). 🙂

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A Bang In the Night

Around 2:30 a.m., a loud bang that shook the rig thrust me out of deep sleep. WTF?! I then noticed that the awful winds had returned. I clambered out of the loft to investigate, the noise having been way too loud to ignore.

I stumbled into the kitchen, found a light, and the sight that greeted me was so unexpected that it took a moment for my sleep addled brain to grasp it. My front door had blown open and I had belongings strewn down the stairwell onto the beach. Outside, the winds of Hades whipped about and icy pellets of rain were falling loudly.

After Tabitha’s great escape, I make checking the door the last part of my evening routine. Had I done that before bed? I was so out of my senses that I couldn’t even remember. I picked up everything and tried to close the door. It wouldn’t catch. I tried again.

After a few attempts, I noticed that the deadbolt was on and that it wouldn’t turn off from inside. I tried with a key and succeeded. I still couldn’t close the door. Holy moly, the door had opened so violently that the secondary lock, that I never use, had activated! Where was a key for it? Oh, right.

I grabbed a spare set of keys that had the secondary lock key on it and fumbled to get the dang thing functional. The wind was blowing so hard that I knew I had no hope of getting the door properly shut from inside. I forced it shut from outside and reentered through the cab.

By this time, I was slightly more awake and I realised I had to do a headcount. Tabitha was cowering in the study. Neelix was AWOL.

I went back out into the maelstrom with a flashlight, calling his name quietly, knowing that the sound of my voice wouldn’t carry to the neighbours over the roar of the wind. I started by checking under Miranda and out of the corner of my eye, I saw a tail go by.

It was impossible to track the passage of time, but it didn’t seem to take that long to coax him out from under Miranda to under Moya to him finally letting me grab him. But once we were inside and I checked the time, more than an hour had passed since the big bang.

The night that followed was interminable. The cats were jittery. I managed to stab myself in the chin with a nail and had to get back out of bed to find paper towels to stop the bleeding. My dreams were incredibly vivid.

At 7:00, I got up to put the computer on charge in the truck and then decided to try to get another couple hours of sleep. After an hour and a half, I gave up.

The winds are still roaring, but there is quite a bit of blue sky and sun this morning. Perhaps I should give that goat to the wind gods?

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It’s… Green

I don’t know if it’s the weather or the fact that you can only walk around the beach so many times, but tonight I was hit with a case of cabin fever bad enough that I actually considered driving an hour to Victoria to catch a movie! Instead, I decided to go to Port Lavaca and have another meal at La antigua to get a firm grip on whether I really like it or not.

I’ve been criticized in the past for posting about restaurant outings, being told by folks that if they wanted to read a food blog, they would read a food blog. But to me, food and travel are intimately linked. And I think that a post about local cuisine and its effects on me will never be off topic.

Tonight, I decided to try something new, ‘enchiladas verdes’ with ‘green sauce.’ I asked the server what tornatillo was, not realising it was a typographical error on the menu and actually tomatillo (r + n does look like m). Her response of, “It’s green” would be hilarious to any classic Star Trek fan. She was able to confirm that it was not a very spicy dish. All right, let’s see if my taste buds do a happy dance.

The enchiladas were made with corn tortillas (which I am starting to really enjoy) filled with ‘fajita chicken’ and topped with green sauce, sour cream, and sliced avocado.

Well… the green sauce was full of chopped cilantro, which does not agree with me and which I think tastes vile. But cilantro is so trendy nowadays that it is in everything and I have more tolerance to it. Mixed with the tomatillos and other spices, I didn’t find the herb offensive at all. I didn’t scrape my plate clean of green sauce, but I would most certainly order this dish again. What a breakthrough!

But that’s not what made the meal so special for me though. I took one bite of the plain avocado topping my meal and I swear I heard angels sing. I finally understand what the fuss is all about! Wow! I would have gladly had just that fresh sweet avocado to cool the heat of my meal instead of the heavy sour cream, and I adore sour cream! I’ve always found avocado to be bland. I think it’s just because I’ve never had truly fresh locally grown avocado. This wasn’t bland at all. I should have stopped for avocados on the way home because I am going to be craving them in the next few days!

Yup, I like La antigua and I will have to go back at least one more time for green enchiladas!

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The Goat is Safe!

Whew! I was really starting to worry that I would have to sacrifice a goat to the sun gods!

The sky was BC-low again for most of today, but we finally got patches of blue sky in late afternoon. The promised sun for tomorrow now feels like a possibility.

Thanks to my battery monitor, I am riding this out nicely, but it will be nice to actually be able to use power again instead of just conserving it!